The invention relates generally to sensors. More specifically, the invention is an apparatus and method for testing pressure-based sensors (collectively the “apparatus”), including but not limited to the sensors used as part of a tire pressure monitoring system (“TPMS”).
Automated technologies can significantly enhance the quality of life of consumers and increase the efficiency of businesses. However, the potential value of automated technologies such as TPMS and other sensor-dependent systems is often compromised by the inability of consumers, businesses, and service personnel to evaluate and test whether or not a particular sensor is functioning properly. Technology can in theory provide all sorts of wonderful functions, but monitoring and maintaining such systems can prove challenging, and such challenges can impede the adoption of automated technology as well as impede the proper use of such technologies. An automated technology that performs functionality based on the output of a faulty sensor can often be more burdensome in that particular context than non-use of the automated technology.
Automated technologies are often purposely opaque to the user because the point of automated technology is to perform certain functions without human intervention. The disadvantage of automated technology that is encapsulated in such a way as to be opaque to the user is that defects can be both hard to detect and difficult to remedy.
Malfunctioning technologies can also have a negative impact on the value of the technology when even in those instances when it does function properly. Numerous false alarms make it far more likely than an actual alarm condition will be ignored. The weakness of sensor-based systems is that as sophisticated as they may be, such systems are still susceptible to the problem of “garbage in” resulting in “garbage out.”